


you wanna? i wanna wanna

by nisakomi, yanchen



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multi, POV Alternating, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 17:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18015566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yanchen/pseuds/yanchen
Summary: Minghao and Xingjie go on a date. Yanchen and Junhui go on a date. Junhui and Minghao are not dating. Xingjie and Yanchen talk about their dates.





	you wanna? i wanna wanna

**Author's Note:**

> [dream - idol producer . mp3]
> 
> wjh and zyc are my first and third top fave idol boys, so this is it: my chance to inaugurate the ao3 handle i'd been sitting on for a year. actually in the process of writing this i realized i don't ship zycwjh at all (altho i'm so happy for their friendship...i think the yanren in me is just too strong). they're both such fascinating people with so many layers and i'm interested in writing about them as foils for each other in the future...so interesting...so complex...
> 
> ANYWAY i don't know if it's made it to twitter but i'll put up screencaps of the weibo posts that inspired this fic in the endnotes!

 

 

“I think for me the truth is,” Xingjie says, grip loose around his glass of wine. If Minghao reached out and poked the goblet, its base would swing back and forth and he’d probably get admonished, maybe even hit. “I would rather be busy. I prefer it.”

Earlier, when Xingjie had surveyed the remnants of dinner and asked if Minghao wanted to move to a bar, he’d suggested just a few beers, easy and light. Minghao had thought the image of nursing pints somewhere seedy with sticky counters didn’t suit Jie-ge, who was always collected, composed, refined, who stared down at you with his eyes half-lidded regardless of your height. “Wine,” Minghao had countered, “if you know a good place.” Xingjie had smiled.

Now, looking at him, sitting casually draped over a bar stool in a ritzy and relatively quiet place, Minghao thinks he can see the beer side of Xingjie too. It’s not that Xingjie looks out of place among the sleek black and shiny surfaces, high end obvious from rows of expensive bottles behind the bartender, starting even from the lowest shelves. Xingjie himself is sort of sleek and shiny, his clothes, his skin, the bit of product in his jet black hair enough to be polished but not artificial. Xingjie’s casual is somehow refined, like it’s an artist’s rendition of casual, and if you put him in the diviest of dives he’d manage to make it look kind of purposeful and chic simply through his presence.

Nonetheless that casualness stays with him. It’s the easy way he holds his drink, the relaxed posture, his easy half-smirk, his calm tone when he speaks. So Minghao’s revising the way he’s thinking of him now. Jie-ge might look so put together he seems he belongs only in the classiest environments, but he has enough sense of self, confidence, and security to fit comfortably somewhere not so prim and proper. There might be a middle ground between wine and beer, it might look like whiskey, but though he’s loath to admit it, Xu Minghao doesn’t exactly have enough life experience to know. Jie-ge probably does. Though Jie-ge would probably laugh at Minghao’s weird attempt to categorize him.

“I remember saying something like that,” Minghao replies, finally tearing his eyes away from Xingjie’s wineglass and looking at his own. He swirls lightly, eyes on the relatively clear burgundy. It’s different from when he drinks alone. He needs a decanter, that’ll be next on his shopping list when he returns to Korea. “To the trainees before the concept evaluations. I told them I don’t want to rest.”

Xingjie rests his chin on his palm. “What did they say to that?”

“They nodded,” Minghao says, “as if they understood. That if you love something enough, so much, that if you’re passionate about it…”

Minghao looks Xingjie in that eye.

“You know, in that moment, I felt so old—”

Xingjie hits him. “If you’re old, what does that make me? And I bet there are trainees on the program older than you.”

Minghao laughs a little. “Mentally. Mentally old, in my heart. Like these kids have gone through so much, right, but they haven’t experienced life at all. They know nothing. They’re just getting started and I’m so worried they’ll get hurt. I don’t know how to tell them how they get to the point where their whole life is just work. That in a way, what they’re doing now is work. I can’t ever stop thinking about work or doing work or talking about work, even now, see?” He stops abruptly, runs his hand through his hair, looks at Xingjie while biting his lower lip. “It’s probably more intense for Jie-ge, because you’re always creating things. So even when you want to you can’t stop for a moment, if that instant of inspiration strikes, that’s it.” He makes an exploding gesture with his hands, and finally sits back in his seat.

“Hm. But they might never get to this point, in this industry.”

“If you work hard—”

Xingjie laughs and leans back in his seat. “You weren’t going to quote the show catchphrase to me just now, were you?”

“No, I was going to say that if you work hard, your efforts will not betray you.”

“Who’s the one who’s young and unexperienced? I’m not saying you had an easy road, but you didn’t have it as hard as some of the others did, or will. You won’t have to keep auditioning and putting yourself out there to find a way to not embarrass yourself or your parents. I went to university for music, Haohao – I know that there are hundreds, thousands, tens of tens of thousands of young people trying to make it. Will they? Even if they work hard? Of course not.”

“You made it,” Minghao reminds him. “After persevering, you’re here now.”

“Perseverance is just a nice term for stubbornness.”

Minghao shuffles backward in his seat, the most literal demonstration of backing down he’s ever displayed in his life.

Jie-ge remains unfazed. “Back to your original point, though…You know what inertia is?”

“Er,” Minghao starts, because he thinks it’s something he should know, yet he couldn’t define it without a bunch of hand-waving and making stuff up on the spot.

“It’s a physics thing,” Xingjie says lightly, again unbothered. “Basically, once something starts moving, it tends to keep moving. But if something isn’t moving, it tends to stay unmoving. It’s a physics thing, so it’s supposed to be about objects, and space, and stuff like that, but I think it applies to people too, and actions, or thoughts and behaviors. And I think we can feel like perpetual machines when we’re working, as if as long as we keep doing something we’ll never get tired, it’s just the next project, next challenge, hit it and go. Even mealtimes, or the times when we see our families, they’re not really a chance to rest so much as they are a moment where we briefly slow down. Never to a stop. I think that’s why we don’t want to rest. If we rest we might finally realize just how exhausted we are and never amass the energy needed to overcome the inertia and finally get going again.”

They don’t stop talking. There’s too much between them, a coming together of very different lives but also a shared experience of living life, and 2am ticks by, then 3, and 4.

And then, after they’ve paid and are leaving, Minghao realizes he’s never asked. “Hey,” he says, “You never showed me any magic tricks.”

Xingjie looks at him with a cocksure smile on his face. “Is that so?” He asks. He places a hand on Minghao’s lower back.

Immediately, something shoots through his spine, a tingle that sends the hair on his neck standing on end, shivers quaking down to his fingertips. His legs go numb, kind of like when he’d injured himself just over a year ago, and he almost misses a step before the feeling returns to his muscles again, slowly, like TV static fading in a clearer image.

“Careful,” Jie-ge says.

Minghao’s heart is pounding.

 

  

☆☆☆☆

 

 

Junhui’s been staring at the menu for ages. Yanchen twitches. Like, internally. Outwardly, he flips the plastic covered page of the menu and nods down at it, would stroke at a long white beard if he had one.

“Hmm…” Junhui mumbles for the third time.

Any second now, Yanchen will open his mouth and before he actually says anything, Junhui will talk himself out of whatever conundrum he’s found himself in with only minor input from outside sources. But if Yanchen clearing his throat can get that ball rolling, so be it.

“I can’t decide what I want to eat!”

“We can order multiple things to try.”

“I know, but there’s too many options…”

“Well, which option are you leaning toward now? Do you want beef? Pork? Chicken?”

Junhui sits up straighter in his seat. “Well, I want pork, but it has to be duck, right? If we’re in Beijing it’s supposed to be duck.”

“Do you _want_ roasted duck?” Yanchen asks. This is the one that’ll seal the deal, even though Junhui doesn’t think he knows what he wants, he actually does. And teasing these kinds of things out of him is this funny sort of challenge Yanchen likes to play by himself. Just sitting, watching, observing, noticing the little quirks and differences that make people tick. Figuring how he can interact with them one-on-one until they lose the sense of otherness that being with someone else inherently brings, so it’s just them in their rawest form, and Yanchen is sitting there, unblinking, nodding along from the sidelines. People, it turns out, have layers.

“Is it good here? Is this place known for duck? I looked at some of the comments online and it seems to have pretty good reviews, except for the odd person here or there. But there are always people who have to be contrarian about everything, and I think you have to look at outliers as outliers. If the majority of the reviews are positive, there’s probably a reason why, and you can’t please everyone,” Junhui says quickly, while Yanchen looks at him with a fond expression on his face, chin in his hands.

“That’s right,” Yanchen says, “some people you can never please.”

Junhui beams.

This is when people are the most mesmerizing. When they can talk about things, even the most mundane of things, and not feel like they’re rambling because in front of them is a captive audience, and it’s rare but nice to feel seen and heard.

“Let’s order the duck,” Junhui says, finally, eyes glittering at the thought, stomach finally knowing what it wants.

They order half a duck, among other things, yes, even vegetables. Junhui immediately whips out his phone to take a video when the chef comes out to carve the roast in front of them, crispy skin and thin slices of meat. Yanchen films a short clip too, mostly in solidarity, but also because the dish where the food is plated, with the ceramic duck head rising out of the end, is kind of cute.

Yanchen sets about rolling up a pancake with duck and scallion, before holding out the finished wrap to feed Junhui. It seems Junhui has a similar idea because there’s another wrap held out in front of him. He takes a bite of the offered roll, grease from the duck fat and sweetness from the bean sauce mixing together in his mouth.

There’s sauce on the corner of Junhui’s lips, licked off a moment later.

Life, Yanchen thinks, is mostly spent figuring out what you want.

He’s not quite sure at what point he decided he wanted to have this. After eating, Yanchen quietly slips away under the guise of using the bathroom only to find the bill’s already been taken care of, and when he returns to the table Junhui’s emptying the last dregs of tea (they had their teapot refilled at least four times, Junhui was certainly a camel in his previous life), spots Yanchen returning, and smiles at him with not a care in the world. Yanchen isn’t quite sure that makes sense.

There is very little about Junhui that makes sense. Yanchen finds himself agreeing to Junhui’s excitement about a midnight snack, chattering about a place Minghao had recommended recently even though they just finished dinner. Junhui wraps both his arms around Yanchen’s right elbow, clinging to him while they walk with their facemasks high, hoods low in the dry wind.

The thing is, Yanchen wants this.

He’s not really the type of person who wants to go forward and take people with him, but he has this sense of responsibility that drives him to, say, take care of an a group of fully grown men trying to put together a reasonable Jay Chou dance cover, or to guide Junhui sideways so he doesn’t walk straight into a puddle while he’s too busy talking to pay attention to the ground. And interestingly, Junhui isn’t someone who trips or gets distracted, but his care for the details seems to go straight to the wind whenever they meet up.

Yanchen can’t explain why that makes his heart grow. He doesn’t know why he wants to hold Junhui’s hand while he’s busy trying to figure out what dessert he wants, but he knows he wants it, and all the weird unpredictability that Junhui brings with him. It’s Junhui who’s made Yanchen realize he wants this, and maybe it’s not so different from when Yanchen coaxes out a decision from Junhui on what he wants to eat (something light, neither of them are still hungry after all).

“Do you want to come over tonight?” Yanchen asks later.

Junhui nods so shyly it’s like he’s a different person, and Yanchen grins.

 

 

☆☆☆☆

 

 

“I’m going out.”

Normally, Junhui doesn’t really notice when people come and go or talk to him while he’s on his phone. Especially when he’s in the middle of a MOBA game, where there isn’t such thing as a pause button and he’ll get reported by his teammates if he disconnects. On most occasions, Minghao can go out and come back and in Junhui’s mental representation of reality, it’s like he never left at all.

Today—

“Wait!” Junhui shouts after him, jumping out of the armchair and rushing toward the door, all the while keeping an eye on his game and furiously typing at his teammates to surrender the game (it’s okay, he was playing with Sicheng and Sicheng’s friend and they get one of the strangers to agree).

Minghao is standing with one arm out to hold the door open. He’s looking back at Junhui, hadn’t even bothered to turn his whole body around, thinking whatever it was would be quick.

Junhui doesn’t know how to make it quick.

Junhui doesn’t even know what it is.

He’s been thinking, recently, brief thoughts, flashes really, about—

“Where are you going?” Junhui blurts out, because he can see Minghao is getting inpatient by the door, there’s no exasperation there yet, not even a change in posture, but the look in his eyes is questioning and soon it’ll grow bored and Junhui has to rush to fill in the gaps.

“A restaurant inside the second ring,” Minghao says slowly, blinking. “You know how traffic is, and I have to drop by a florist first—”

“Flowers?” Junhui asks.

It’s another thing to add to the list, he doesn’t know if Minghao doesn’t think he’s noticed the smell of alcohol and cigarettes and cologne that isn’t his own or if he doesn’t care. The addition of flowers only adds to Junhui’s weird sense of things, although thinking about himself thinking like this, he sounds like a jilted lover even in his own mind to himself. That’s not how he feels, he just wants to know—

“Yeah,” Minghao says, “Jie-ge said if I brought a rose, he’d show me a magic trick.” Minghao rolls his eyes. “It’s super cheesy but how many other people do we know who can do magic? Don’t say Qian Kun, it doesn’t count if we can never actually see them.”

Oh. Xingjie. That.

“I’m pretty sure Jie-ge was the one who taught him anyway,” Junhui mumbles.

So Minghao’s been going out to see Xingjie with their time in Beijing.

“Yeah, see? Anyway if the food is good I’ll let you know so you can try it later too.”

Junhui, voice trembling, asks: “Oh. Is that why you recommended the café?”

“Right, that place. We went after dinner once and it seemed like something I thought you’d enjoy. Did you go?”

“Mm. With Yanchen.”

Minghao laughs. “Next time we should just plan the double date together instead of having to go separately. Although I’d be kind of surprised if the two of them don’t sort of know the same places.” He looks down at his watch. “Okay, I’m really leaving now, see—”

“—Xu Minghao.”

“Huh?” Minghao catches the door closing behind him and faces Junhui, looking at him full on. A frown develops on his face, slowly, as if something is dawning on him. “Junhui…What’s wrong? You’re being…weirder than normal.”

Junhui opens his mouth and closes it again. Quietly, he asks, “Will we have time to visit the zoo before we go back to Korea?”

The door closes behind Minghao. He’s looking at Junhui, the expression on his face difficult to read. He sighs, makes an attempt at saying, “Aiyou,” that gets muffled in Junhui’s shoulder when he pulls him forward into a hug.

Minghao having someone to spend time with is sort of…well, a lot of the time he just heads out alone to explore things, do things, be active and exciting or whatever. And it’s not like Minghao doesn’t have friends, but he’s also not someone who really spends that much time seeking out plans with others, especially because he’s so comfortable doing things by himself.

Junhui could do things by himself too, theoretically. He had thought, though, that he and Minghao would explore the current iteration of Beijing together. Find food, and activities, and—

Weirdly, it’s like Junhui’s developed a dependency on Minghao in China, of all places.

Where Minghao used to have to stick with one of the members, usually Junhui really, when they were out in Korea, quiet and always glancing sideways to indicate for someone else to speak for him, Junhui found himself wanting to rely on—That wasn’t the right word.

He didn’t have any of this sort of discomfort when he was in Shenzhen, but Shenzhen, maybe, even if it changed, was his own turf. Shenzhen didn’t give him the time or space or sense of foreignness that Beijing did. Beijing had never been home, with its stone-faced residents and the strange Northern lilt in their speech. But it seemed like it should be home – the members didn’t differentiate when he flew back to China. It was “you’re going _back_ to China right?” even though China was an entire country and Seoul to Beijing was a shorter flight than Beijing to Shenzhen.

In a way, having Minghao beside him had become a crutch. Minghao might feel similarly. That had been, in part, why they had wanted to branch out and work with others when they were on the TX show, although even then, Minghao was at most a few steps away, always there to offer advice or feedback if Junhui should ask.

Being in Beijing while Minghao was off tangling with Zhu Xingjie…Junhui…

“Why do you feel lonely?” Minghao asks Junhui, who hadn’t realized that had been what he was feeling until named like that. “You have someone you can go to the zoo with.”

Oh. That was true.

Junhui looked down at the phone in his hands, thumb hovering over his WeChat messages with Yanchen.

Minghao was right.

 

  

☆☆☆☆

 

 

His best friend is a fucking idiot.

Xingjie hates how accurate all the stupid love songs in the world are. Maybe if the early poets hadn’t spoken the words “love makes fools of us all” then the truth wouldn’t be so plain. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a truth at all. There is, has always been, a power to words, once uttered.

He’s never writing a love song again (he will, probably later today, using this exact instance as inspiration for the lyrics – this is how he responds to life experience after all).

At this point, there’s nothing left to do. Xingjie’s made breakfast and coffee, both cooled down to a consumable temperature. The act cannot be further delayed, Mr. Zhou has to be woken up.

“Little kid,” Xingjie says quietly, “it’s time to wake up.”

He shakes Yanchen’s shoulder firmly, and Yanchen comes to with surprising speed.

“It’s time?” Yanchen mumbles. He opens his eyes, about halfway, and squints out into the dark.

There’s about twenty minutes until 5am, which is when Yanchen has to leave for filming. Of course, the child didn’t get home until nearly three in the morning, tossing himself into bed with a contented sigh, as if only sleeping for two hours was a blessing and not completely cursed.

Xingjie shouldn’t be surprised. In some ways, Yanchen’s claim to fame is his lack of sleep. Really, it’s his inability to say no. Whether that no should be said to himself or someone else. Xingjie doesn’t know anyone who’s more demanding or exacting of themselves than Yanchen, and he knows himself. And on top of that, not knowing when to stop. Actually, that’s the real problem, right? Or all these things are symptoms of something else in Yanchen.

“You pathetic excuse for an intelligent being. You utter dumbass. How can you be so stupid?”

Yanchen sort of laughs in response to that. Laughs! And pretends to pout. Xingjie flicks a finger into his forehead. He’d hit him more forcefully, but he’s not sure the little shit has the braincells to spare.

“You knew you had filming early this morning so of course you pull a late night out playing, right?”

“Eh, Jie-ge, not all of us can have unstructured production time in the day…I want only night time engagements too but that’s not how the industry works, unfortunately.” Yanchen is unbelievably coherent on this little sleep, this early in the morning. The lack of rest doesn’t deter him from anything. He’s already sprung out of bed, ignoring Xingjie standing with his arms crossed leaning against the wall and watching Yanchen saunter off into the bathroom like this is his routine.

“If your filming scheduling was set weeks in advance, is that really what’s to blame here?”

Around his toothbrush, Yanchen says, “I wanted to spend more time with Junhui before he leaves.”

“You make it sound like it’s that easy,” Xingjie grumbles. 

To Yanchen, things _are_ that simple. This is the sort of drive that’s underlying all of the other inexplicable stuff Yanchen does. He knows the things he wants. He believes in the things he wants. And he’ll do whatever he thinks is necessary to realize what he wants. Sometimes things that are incredibly disjointed, like Yanchen spending more time than necessary with the company trainees and helping out high school friends with their get-rich-quick schemes, are explained by something as simple as Yanchen wanting the people in the world to experience strong, positive development.

The dedication to achieving his desires probably makes a good idol. It’s the kind of trait you need to make it in their industry, something about perseverance that Minghao believes in too. And Xingjie doesn’t think it’s a bad thing. He doesn’t think he supports people not being committed to their dreams. But Xingjie also knows how to prioritize. In fact, he prioritizes prioritizing. So there are some basic life skills that he can employ that these other children don’t seem to be aware of. Things like knowing when to cut your losses and understanding that your own health and well-being is a prerequisite for goal attainment. And on top of that, maybe he’s not so focused on ‘making it’. Maybe his time in university, on too many survival programs, and current life as a celebrity have taught him that it’s more important to thrive than to survive.

Yanchen spits noisily into the sink. “What, don’t tell me you don’t wring out every last second when Minghao is in China.”

Annoying. Rude. Xingjie shouldn’t have to put up with this crap.

“What I do in my own time doesn’t affect my work. Except in positive ways.”

“I’m awake, aren’t I? It’s not affecting my work if I can still get to the site and remember all my lines.” Yanchen counters. “Although I do think that it’s cute you have a muse to inspire your work. Have you shown him any of the songs you’ve written yet?”

“Don’t you dare send him anything Zhou Yan—”

“—Aha! So you do admit Minghao is your muse!”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i wanna, i wanna wanna, i wanna dream  
> -the wise philosopher, ding zeren  
> (also xu longhan...)  
> 
>  
> 
> the events that transpired leading to this fic
> 
> zxj posted a photo of him and xmh having dinner together, captioned: "I want to do my best just for that romantic instant." --Xu Minghao
> 
> xmh commented: let's work hard together bro~ today was a great memory hahaha  
> to which zxj replied: For Dream Bro
> 
> and then wjh commented: @zyc come look!! these two took the chance while we weren't there to run off and eat well together  
> to which zyc replied: that's right, what is this? 
> 
>  
> 
> **♡ OT4 ♡**


End file.
